I have been making art quilts for about 14 years now. I have made award winning quilts. In 2010 I had a quilt in a special exhibit in Houston. The exhibit was called "Out on a Limb". I have a passion for teaching quilting. My quilt Rosie, My Blue Heeler was in a special exhibit in Houston. I have taught at Quilt Expo for the past 5 years. I love giving lectures to guilds and workshops. Please visit my website http://laurakrasinski.com

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Challenges

I don't know about you but, I love challenges. Most of my first quilts that I made were from Challenges. There are so many challenges on the internet you can get into. Or in your guilds, or art quilt groups.
I started in Milwaukee Art Quilters. Getting involved in the challenges were offered. Now I am involved in a challenge with our new Art quilt group Threadbenders. The challenge is called Anything goes. We are having so much fun with this challenge because it is a round robin of sorts. You read about it and see our progress here.

This was a Hoffman Challenge from 2008. We had to usethe fabric below in the quilt. I used the peacock tailsfor tall leaves coming up from the garden. This quilt waspicked to travel for a year.

The fabric for the 2008 Hoffman Challenge

This quilt was made from a grab bag challenge. You were to look around your house and find some objectto put in a brown paper bag. Mine had a couple of these Lotus Seed Pods in it. So I decided to go and buy a fewmore so that I could use them as a stamp. I used textile paint and some silk fabric to stamp some images. I used some ofthat fabric along with some of my overdyed and overdyed from Quilt Tapestry Studio. I love Wendy's overdidfabrics and SOCKS!!

This was a paint chip challenge. We had to find 2 colored paint chips. One that started out with our first name "L" and one with our last name "K" So I found Lagoon and Kalamata Olive. Using those 2 fabrics I took one of my photos from the Milwaukee County Zoo and made Zak. I made Zak first and then auditioned him on background fabrics. None of them worked for me until I realized I had made Zebra fabric curtains for my daughters room.. I ran upstairs and brought one down and decided that was it!! This was a challenge with West Suburban Quilt Guild.

This is my dog... she is a Blue Heeler

Milwaukee Art Quilters had a challenge called "the blues". I am not a fan of the color Blue. So after the challenge was announced I went home thinking I'm not going to do that challenge. I told my husband about it and he said, " why wouldn't you do it? Our dog is a Blue Heeler. A light bulb immediately lit up in my head and so here is Rosie, My Blue Heeler.

My quilt of Rosie was in Houston for the "It's Raining Cats and Dogs" exhibit. I was so honored!! Then a few months later the Quilt Mania magazine from New Zealand came out. And there in the middle of it was Rosie. I mean I was shocked. I was on the same pages with internationally famous quilters. It was very exciting.

So really you never know where a quilt can take you. You might make it for one challenge and then it is picked for a show. Just make it fun!!

This was a small challenge. Chris Kirsch handed out vintage double wedding ring pieces and we were to make something out of them. At that time I was into making Hexies. So I took the pieces and cut them into squares and made hexies out of them for the center of the flowers. This was a really fun challenge. Everything is fused onto the background fabric.

I made this quilt for a rusted fabric challenge. Most of the brown that you see is rusted muslin. The grey and white is tea stained. I call this Look to the Cross. I didn't make it into the challenge but, it was in quite a few local shows. Trying a new technique. There is tulle over the middle of the cross and the litttle dots are actually beads that I had sewn on. Well, that is about all I have time for today.. If you have an idea for a challenge please comment below. I'm always looking for a good challenge. My next challenge that I will be working on is taking a photo and making an abstract quilt from it. This is our next Threadbenders challenge. March is when we pick the photo. This, I l might add, was one of my ideas. I did one years ago at a shop called Fabric Fusion in Brown Deer, WI. The store is no longer there but, I have found the original Quilting Arts magazine where the idea came from and I still have my quilt. It was just a small challenge so the quilt is only about 8x10". There were so many more challenges I couldn't post them all.

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Antoinette's quilt shop in Plover

This is the cute shop in Plover where I have taught and will be teaching in April. The owner is sooo nice and so are all the gals that work there.. it is bright and cheery.. so if you are ever in the area stop in.. thier address is 3046 Village Park Drive, Plover, WI 54467 Like them on facebook